Elisa Hawksley

Engaging students in multicultural curriculum

The goal of this action research project is to allow students to explore alternative cultures through storytelling and folklore. There were a total of twenty-six third grader participants in the classroom study. Four of the students come from multicultural backgrounds and the remaining students are of Anglo descent. The students all showed interest in learning multicultural curriculum through storytelling and folklore. I created a unit with the concept of perspectives and worked to involve many opportunities for students to make new discoveries about differing cultures through literature. The student reception to multicultural folklore lessons were measured through classroom observations, classroom assignments, reading assignments and final projects. Overall, students were interested to learn multicultural differences through these educational lessons and this was shown through their demonstration in full participation in the classroom activities. This implies that multicultural education through storytelling is successful and helps me teach the importance of diversity.